


Piano

by Altenprano



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: Gen, One Shot, Piano
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-30
Updated: 2014-09-30
Packaged: 2018-02-19 09:24:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2383181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Altenprano/pseuds/Altenprano
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A brief one shot focusing on the piano in the servants' hall, and the two footmen who played it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Piano

**Author's Note:**

>   
>  So this came to be when I was wondering about the whole Daisy/William, Daisy/Jimmy relationship (not a ship of mine, but it's a character relationship that is explored in that one (deleted?) scene), and I realized that the only commonality between William and Jimmy was the piano. And so it happened from there!  
> Disclaimer: I don't own _Downton Abbey_ , and this is my first shot at present tense. Enjoy!

The piano has been there for as long as anyone can remember, tucked out of the way in the servants’ hall, unnoticed. Its dark body has begun to absorb the carefully-painted detailing on the sides, which tell of days when perhaps the instrument sat in a place of honor upstairs, but those days had passed, and now a grand piano occupies the drawing room, and the dark upright has been exiled downstairs. No more do soft, delicately-shaped fingers coax the sounds of Beethoven or Chopin from keys that are now closer to the off-white of undyed wool than the ivory-cream of its past. The only light that the keys feel is the flicker of electricity that replaced the candles in the servants’ hall, and the feeling of May sunlight as it streams through open windows that open onto the rolling grounds of the estate is a forgotten piece of its past.

The creak of the cover is never heard among the sounds of daylight; the footsteps on worn flagstone, the one-way exchange of orders between superiors and inferiors, and the scrape of hard bristles on cast-iron and copper pots-- the chime of a hammer hitting thick wires has no place in the symphony of a life of service. Even in the still that luncheon brings, the piano remains untouched and invisible, nothing more than a shadow with faded gold foliage that swallows a length of the pale yellow wall.

When the crowd of servants disperses after supper, then the cover is lifted, the old wood whining despite the careful hand that lifts it. The fingers that settle atop the keys are the slender, squared-off fingers of a young man, not the feminine roundness that the piano was meant for. However, he plays with the loose fingers of a woman, folk songs and ragtime bursting forth from the precise movements of his hands, the calloused hands of someone who was good friends with hard work early on, but the roughness has been tempered by just as many years of handling silver, leather, and bootblack.

Most nights, he plays simple waltzes and watches out of the corner of grey-blue eyes as maids and footmen find themselves partners for a cautious, one-minute dance. He listens as a sweet-voiced maid follows his fingers, a dance between two solitary beings that is just as timid as the caricature of intimacy that tries to follow the six-eight steps that his fingers navigate with ease across a black and white terrain.

In moments like these, the artificial light is just as warm and as loving as real sunlight, and any trace of weariness is banished. Here, it is all light and warmth, and there is no room between notes and laughter for sadness. It is too well-lit for sadness to creep up and shatter the moment, and too alive to allow the dead to encroach upon the young men and women who have created their own life of elegance in the space of a few songs.

And then, the music stops.

The fingers that once created gentle melodies with no more than a touch now yank the trigger of a rifle, shattering a half-breath of silence in the trenches. There is no calm, always fear and anticipation of attack, and no room for music. The war claims the lives of the dancing footmen, leaving their hesitant partners lingering like ghosts in a dim hall beside an empty piano bench, and the strong body that knows how to ply wood, ivory, and wire to create a sound pure enough to dispel the nightmare of war is counted among the dead.

The war comes to an end, but still, the piano sits silently in its place, a film of dust giving it the appearance of a holy relic, a monument to the dead footman who sat before it every night, playing until his fingers protested with a silent whine of their own. It is surrounded by the young women who never knew the sorrow that followed the loss of a dance partner, however tentative and however brief the partnership had been, who now sit bent over garments in need of mending or huddled in threes, gossiping in the dim electric light. They remember their partners as they would remember a lover or a fallen brother, and there are times when some speak to the souls of the footmen, casting their voices into the still darkness of attic rooms, and waiting in vain for a reply.

The dust does not linger for long, stirred from its resting place by the smooth confidence of a stranger’s hands as they hammer out the bouncing ragtime of cities in the hall that was once filled with the smooth tones of the surrounding country.The ghosts of footmen disappear from the hearts of the maids who knew them from brief moments they spent in each other’s arms, becoming the faded memories they are, robbed of all color by the mischievous grin of the golden-haired young man who perches on the old wooden bench.

Smiles and laughter fill the evenings once more, accompanied by the infatuation of the young women with the stranger, which feeds the fingers racing carelessly across the keys to create indelicate melodies that an older maid claims sounds like the chaos of the city, but the other maids pay her no mind. Their attention is fixed on the young man who teases the keys as the maids wish he would tease them, and sometimes he does, his lips curling into a cheeky smile that he offers to any girl he catches staring his way, and his voice can be heard behind the closed door of the boot room, exchanging empty words with a hopeful maid before another catches his eye.

The other footmen scoff at him, denied their dance partners and forced to make their own evenings with a deck of cards and tobacco smoke in another room, but the ragtime continues, even if there is no one to dance to the music. On some nights, the others will welcome the stranger to their games, and the sound of the piano is replaced with the jests of those who survived the war or never knew the trenches, those who now seek their place in the world, two decades after the turn of the century. The stranger speaks of adventures he might have, of beautiful women, champagne, and seeing the world, and once more, the footmen laugh.

In the chill of a February morning, the piano falls silent once more, shadows creeping over its worn body as a cart trundles away from the servants’ entrance to the house, the fair-haired stranger perched in front with the brim of his hat tilted to block the sun. The dust returns, forming a veneer of silvery-brown on the bench that groans under the weight of the silent evenings, and the memorial to the footman who spent his evenings playing out waltzes rises again, blending in with the room as is the way of all footmen. A reminder of the stranger lingers in the hearts of the maids, along with their forgotten ghosts, among which the player of ragtime will find himself, as soon as another handsome face and pair of strong hands come to stir the dust that settles on the ivory keys and the aging paint of the piano.

_fin_

__

**Author's Note:**

>   
>  Hope you enjoyed it and thanks for reading!


End file.
